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UHF antenna irony

Why is it that every-time I make a new UHF antenna to see if it works, we have a good tropo DX available? Tonight I tried to make a UHF yagi antenna specifically for UHF51 (WTAE TV 4) since it is usually the one that had the most signal, even though I could not get it all the time. So I spent about an hour making the make-shift antenna, hooked it up to the amp and the converter box and instantly had about 75% signal strength on it in my dining room. I thought wow that is awesome. So I went and grabbed the little Radio Shack Yagi that I had (rated for about 40miles) and plugged it in, damn it, it works too for just that one channel. So the test will be tomorrow when the tropo effect goes away if my home-made one still works or not. If it does, I might try modifying it to get some of the other channels.

The yagi was made using calculations on this site: http://www.k7mem.com/Electronic_Notebook/antennas/yagi_vhf.html. Since I was making a “tuned” antenna, it was basically only for one frequency. To find the frequency, I used http://www.csgnetwork.com/tvfreqtable.html and used the bottom number for the channel (i.e. 692MHz for Channel 51).

Also to see when DX’ing might be good check out http://www.dxinfocentre.com/tropo.html

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Comcast Channel Frequencies

Spent the other night updating the list. It now seems that if you are using a cable box in the Morgantown area, it uses QAM for every channel on it. The only way to see the analog channels is to connect the cable directly to the TV. This is just them getting one step closer to requiring a cable box for every tv in the house. The only channels that will be left will be the local broadcast type channels. So here is a list of channels that I was able to determine what frequencies and qam channels they are on:

Comcast Channel Lineup for Morgantown WV

It is sorted by the frequency in case you are wondering why stuff is “out of order”.

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Who’s knocking on your door?

It seems that the new “thing” on the internet these days is port scanning for port 22 (aka SSH).  I was going through my firewall logs on my home router and over the last week or so, it is broken down as follows:

country cnt
China 2123
Germany 1827
Italy 1460
United States 1115
Russian Federation 838
Korea, Republic of 738
Austria 692
Poland 618
Spain 502
Colombia 453
India 441
Czech Republic 323
Ecuador 286
Romania 282
Belgium 256
Chile 228
Panama 201
Pakistan 199
France 198
Argentina 170
Canada 148
Switzerland 138
Ukraine 129
Taiwan 128
Venezuela 111
Mexico 111
Denmark 105
Hungary 101
Slovenia 87
Brazil 77
Guatemala 59
Uruguay 53
Estonia 50
Croatia 48
Singapore 36
Australia 32
Portugal 32
Hong Kong 29
Greece 25
New Zealand 24
Ireland 18
Netherlands 17
Serbia 15
United Kingdom 13
South Africa 12
Malaysia 9
Thailand 8
Peru 7
Moldova, Republic of 6
Azerbaijan 3
Turkey 2
Malta 1
Total 14585

As a comparison, attempts that were blocked that weren’t ssh only totaled 1430. So are these bot’s or people looking for rogue iPhone’s or just trying to find new vulnerabilities in SSH? The interesting thing is it appears that each source IP tries 3 times. The second try is 3 seconds after the first and the third is 6 seconds after the second.

An interesting IP is 217.70.139.42, which has tried 303 times since the 14th. The IP is from Germany and also appears on several SSH dictionary attacks. So is it time to start running services on non-standard ports?

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Another Internet Explorer exploit

Just released, another exploit to Internet Explorer 6 & 7, that allows “hackers” to install software on your machine… What do the major Antivirus people say:

“To minimize the chances of being affected by this issue, Internet Explorer users should ensure their antivirus definitions are up to date, disable JavaScript and only visit Web sites they trust until fixes are available from Microsoft,” Symantec said.

How many mom and pop’s out there even know how to disable java script, and only visit sites they trust? Let alone make sure their antivirus definitions are updated. I have seen some virus trick Symantec’s AV in to thinking the definitions were up to date, and then I go to find hundreds of virus’ on my parents computer. This is just another reason why building the web browser in to the OS is a bad thing and why it should be sandbox’d off in to its own little area.

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Avenue Q

See what all the fuzz is about

Went last night with some friends to see Avenue Q. For those who have never heard of it or seen it, think of Sesame Street for adults. It was a blast. Some how we ended up with front row center seats. If you ever get to New York city, London or select city’s in Australia you should really see it. (Assuming that adult humor does not offend you.) They also have some national tours going on right now which would be another way to see it.

I was so surprised at the number of kids that came with their parents. It was clearly labeled as not for kids, yet I saw parents bringing their kids assuming that since there are “puppets” that it was a kids show. If they didn’t find out in the first couple of minutes that it wasn’t a kids show, they surely found out when they did the bit about how the “Internet is for Porn”.

Some links for Avenue Q:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avenue_q

http://www.avenueq.com/

http://www.avenueqgoods.com/